I don’t know if you are able to tell by my writing style, or by the fact that I am writing for a university blog, but I am neither a tween nor a “young adult”. Well, I guess technically I am a young adult, but 20 year olds are never what people mean when they say young adults. “Young adults” aren't young adults; they are older children, usually between the ages of 13 and 17. And that demographic is one that advertisers, filmmakers and novelists have been targeting for years. This is a group of young people going through a transitional time in their lives, and they seem to eat up media that have characters who share the types of emotional experiences they are going through. Some films and novels, like the Harry Potter series and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl do this extremely well. Everything, Everything does not.
Everything, Everything, based on the novel by Nicola Yoon, is a soulless film that lacks both interesting characters and any kind of backbone. The film follows 18 year-old Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg), a teen who suffers from a rare disease that causes her to have extreme allergic reactions to almost everything that exists in the outdoors. Because of these allergies, she is forced to live an isolated life in her home, only coming into contact with her mother (Anika Noni Rose), Nurse Carla (Ana de la Reguera) and friend Rosa (Danube Hermosillo). Everything changes, however, when Maddy begins forming a relationship with Olly Bright (Nick Robinson), her new neighbor. This budding romance causes Maddy to call into question everything about her condition and life trapped inside the same four walls.
Maybe it’s simply because I am not a middle-school aged person anymore, but nothing that happened in this movie interested or spoke to me on any level. This is because none of the characters do anything to stand out or make you care about them. They are all quite boring, and that goes especially for the two leads. We are essentially made to believe that Olly and Maddy are so charming that they both fall for each other instantly, without knowing anything about the other. Except nothing these characters do is remotely quirky or interesting. They are the most normal and dull people I could imagine a movie being made about. I feel like the film thinks that the main character having a rare disease makes her inherently interesting. It doesn’t. She is boring.
And the lack of depth that the characters have only accentuates the predictable and lifeless story. I won’t expressly say what happens at the end of the film, but it is so fairy-talish and safe that I feel like a room of executives sat down and wondered how best to pander to a young audience. The movie feels like it has about thirty safety nets to ensure that nothing even vaguely upsetting happens throughout the movie. This makes it feel as though the film has literally no stakes, which only adds to the nothingness and boredom created by the blank-slate characters.
Everything, Everything is a drag. It’s a film that completely lacks anything intriguing. It’s a dull and predictable mess of a film, the kind of movie that thoroughly misses the mark of being original in any facet. Maybe I’m just out of touch, because the pre-teen females in the audeince really seemed to dig what was going on. I’m glad they found value in it. I didn’t.
Grade: D
Everything, Everything, based on the novel by Nicola Yoon, is a soulless film that lacks both interesting characters and any kind of backbone. The film follows 18 year-old Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg), a teen who suffers from a rare disease that causes her to have extreme allergic reactions to almost everything that exists in the outdoors. Because of these allergies, she is forced to live an isolated life in her home, only coming into contact with her mother (Anika Noni Rose), Nurse Carla (Ana de la Reguera) and friend Rosa (Danube Hermosillo). Everything changes, however, when Maddy begins forming a relationship with Olly Bright (Nick Robinson), her new neighbor. This budding romance causes Maddy to call into question everything about her condition and life trapped inside the same four walls.
Maybe it’s simply because I am not a middle-school aged person anymore, but nothing that happened in this movie interested or spoke to me on any level. This is because none of the characters do anything to stand out or make you care about them. They are all quite boring, and that goes especially for the two leads. We are essentially made to believe that Olly and Maddy are so charming that they both fall for each other instantly, without knowing anything about the other. Except nothing these characters do is remotely quirky or interesting. They are the most normal and dull people I could imagine a movie being made about. I feel like the film thinks that the main character having a rare disease makes her inherently interesting. It doesn’t. She is boring.
And the lack of depth that the characters have only accentuates the predictable and lifeless story. I won’t expressly say what happens at the end of the film, but it is so fairy-talish and safe that I feel like a room of executives sat down and wondered how best to pander to a young audience. The movie feels like it has about thirty safety nets to ensure that nothing even vaguely upsetting happens throughout the movie. This makes it feel as though the film has literally no stakes, which only adds to the nothingness and boredom created by the blank-slate characters.
Everything, Everything is a drag. It’s a film that completely lacks anything intriguing. It’s a dull and predictable mess of a film, the kind of movie that thoroughly misses the mark of being original in any facet. Maybe I’m just out of touch, because the pre-teen females in the audeince really seemed to dig what was going on. I’m glad they found value in it. I didn’t.
Grade: D
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